Falling Asleep

Before now I have never been able to spot the point at which I had fallen asleep, but thanks to my avoidance of clarity/words of the Emissary I feel I moved on a stage in my training.

Last night I was acutaley aware of falling alseep, I felt my limbs go numb and my brain stayed alert into the sleep state. The feeling of falling asleep it seems is related to the feeling of getting a dead arm, there is a tingling sensation followed by a loss of recognition of the body part. With my right arm I felt it fuzz and while I knew it was still there I was unable to pinpoint the position of it in space.

I observed this procedure in every part of my body until it reached my head. At the time of my brain falling asleep there was a moment of switching from awareness of my surroundings in bed, to an instant dream like state.

I have never fallen asleep straight into a dream before, so i'm almost sure this was not the same thing as a dream. As I understand the sleep pattern, there are stages of sleep that must be passed through before REM sleep will occur. I understand that sleep can warp perception of time but as you will see this whole thing took place in a very short timeframe.

So as soon as I fall asleep, I am awake, bizarrely i'm moving at high speed in a forwards direction. I appear to be in a boat on the sea as off to my right is a beach, I have this need to get somewhere and it's somewhere on the horizon. I look down and it's not a boat, i'm on some sort of controllable board, it was more magic carpet than boat.

The sea is passing beneath me and I am very close to it, skimming over the surface, the water is calm and smooth. I actually feel like i'm on a rubber ring being pulled behind a boat, but there is no boat and my ring can move by itself.

It occurs to me that this is not normal and I am asleep, I take in all that surrounds me and I gain control over the movement. I move closer to the shore and then deeper out in to the see at will, I get very close to the beach and can see the bottom of the ocean floor just beneath the water, this is far too shallow I think to myself and go to stear out again to deeper water.

Just then a black dog starts chasing me from the beach and barks at me aggressively. It catches me easily and is biting at the back of my craft, I wake up because of this. Checking the clock I find that I have only been alseep for 5 minutes.

I have some questions for myself now:

Firstly is it possible to fall asleep straight into a dream? This is something I have never heard of and certainly has never happend to me before.

Secondly, Am I deluding myself, this dream conforms to the teaching of Casteneda but is this life imitating art? Am I progressing in my learning or just becomming more fucked up in the head?

Lastly, did I really have control of a dream? or did I just dream that I had control of a dream?

The Act of falling asleep is something that has escaped my attention, that is until last night.